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Friday, June 17, 2011

During my memory walk of the neighborhood I stayed in for my school years, i came accross a lot of development. It was a newly-opened subdivision then, and only a few houses were there. Now it is fully occupied, and i cant seem to remember which house is whose. It's been a long time! A previously dead end street is now already opened to traffic. A large vacant lot before is now the site of a big nursery for ornamental plants, uncommon fruit trees and vegetables and a whole array of very beautiful flowers. Apparently, a former director of an agricultural international agency has decided to do what he love most during his retirement. There was also a post on the fence of a house "sweet potato tops - free". If only my house is near i can help for some vegetable salad.

I also encountered 2 ladies making a flower arrangement, made of heliconias, torch gingers and some fillings which i am not familiar. These are products from the slopes of Mt Makiling, which is a forest reserve and a protected area. Mountain dwellers plant these ornamentals under the trees or some spaces in-between them, then sell the harvests to the lowlanders.

The above and bottom Heliconia are about 1.5 - 2 meters high

Above and bottom 4 photos, the greenish-orange and orange-red varieties are Calathea crotalifera

They are gorgeous and so bright too. We have lots of Calathea in the landscape here. The flowers don't look as attractive as the ones you show though. The thing about Calathea and Heleconia is that they look much better when detached from the plant.

These plants grow well in our equatorial climate. The foliage makes my garden looks cool and the flowers are a bonus, quite common here but exotic looking. The torch ginger flowers in your place look quite different from ours here. I think the Calathea crotalifera blooms look like big combs and even a rattlesnake!

Glad to know that there is a nursery now. Hopefully more people will buy the fresh flowers and plants to beautify their homes and gardens.

Ever Green Tree - Actually it is a cut banana trunk they used as a base, its coolness will at least lengthen the shelf life, however, it is not as good as water. They just use it for arrangements to be used in just one affair.

One - you are very right, they look better when already severed from mother plants as cutflowers, otherwise the plants looks so chaotic and gloomy to me. Just now i've cut a lot of used stems from our 3 varieties of Heliconia.

PatioPatch - oh yes, they somehow look like pine cones! I think when someone loves gardening, wherever you put him he will plant something, just like me living at the 5th floor of a condominium building, and i planted garlic as foreground for my sunset photos. I've posted them before in my Skywatch Friday posts.

Mark and Gaz - that's correct, but i wonder why in your garden you have mostly foliage plants.

Rosie of leavesnbloom - the texture and color seem suffocating in their brightness, that to us they seem not so beautiful anymore.

Autumn Belle - i hope you saw my gratefullness to you for the rattlesnake flower ID. Actually rattlesnake is one of its common names, as i searched for it.

Helen the islandgal - the big arrangements are for wide interiors or in a big corner of the room or on a stage. The cut heliconia and Calathea are more than 1m long.

Shirley - as i discussed in the post, i just saw the 2 ladies making the flower arrangement, i just asked permission to take photos. Thanks for dropping by.

Jeansgarden - hahaha, my place is far from this area, i just happened to pass by them making the arrangements. In this parts, we seldom buy them for our own as they are very common here. They use them only for big affairs to beautify some corners. Thanks for visiting.

WELCOME!

You are welcome to my blog. Your comments, suggestions and/or advice are surely appreciated. I am from the Philippines, a hot tropical climate, and this blog is a mixture of travels, photos and a lot more from here and abroad. I hope you enjoy it.